Shots from the other side: the killer of police officers was detained 25 years later

The 25-year-old double murder was uncovered by UK investigators this week. As it turned out, the main accused, a certain Oleg Babaev, disappeared from sight immediately after the crime was committed, as he ended up in prison in another country. According to the investigation, it was Babaev who shot two police officers in the south of the capital in 1995. Details of the criminal history – in the material “Izvestia”.

Two corpses in “Zhiguli”

The crime was committed on June 10, 1995. “In a VAZ car parked near a residential building on Bulatnikovskiy proezd in Moscow, the bodies of two employees of the non-departmental police were found with signs of violent death in the form of gunshot wounds.”, – said in a press release from the capital management of the TFR.

The media noted that the crime was committed at the entrance. The killer fired from a TT, criminologists counted six wounds on the bodies of policemen – all in the head. The victims of the attack were the junior sergeants of the private security guard Alexander Kozyrev and Grigory Alexandrov. It is curious that the police were not in an official, but in a private car with civilian numbers.

The operatives quickly established that on the eve of the massacre, their colleagues were stopped to check the previously convicted local resident Oleg Babayev, nicknamed Babay. Soon, the detectives broke into the apartment of the alleged killer, but the man was not there. As it turned out later, he fled to Azerbaijan. There he also continued his criminal activities.

“During the interrogation, the detainee explained that after 1995 he was on the territory of another state, where in the period from 2002 to 2015 he was serving his sentence in a correctional institution.”, – said Yulia Ivanova, the official representative of the Moscow ICR department, Interfax reports. Presumably, he was punished for robbery. After serving his sentence, he was expelled to his homeland, to Russia, where he was hiding under the name of Pavel Ulovsky. MUR detectives detained the suspect on August 2 at the place of registration, having received operational information about the return of the wanted person.

The Chertanovsky court of the capital arrested Babayev on 4 August. He did not admit his guilt in the double murder.

What’s with the timing

Despite the fact that 25 years have passed since the crime was committed, Babayev has every chance of receiving a harsh sentence, up to life imprisonment, if his guilt is proven in court.

– Part 3 of Art. 78 of the Code of Criminal Procedure states that the course of time limits is suspended if the person who committed the crime evades the investigation. It is necessary that in a criminal case a procedural decision was made to suspend the preliminary investigation on the grounds provided for in paragraph 2 of part 1 of Art. 208 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, that is, for the search for a suspect or accused. Despite the suspension of the preliminary investigation for the search for the accused, the authorities of the preliminary investigation must prove that throughout the entire time the person was hiding from law enforcement officers, which may be expressed in a change of place of residence, the identity of the wanted person, etc. At the same time, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation explains that a person, if he did not know that he was wanted, did not take any measures to hide himself from the investigation, lived at the place of his registration, is considered not hiding from the preliminary investigation, which means the provisions of Art. 78 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, – Roman Sirotin, the lawyer of MKA A posteriori, told Izvestia. In other words, Babayev’s possession of someone else’s passport and active attempts to escape from justice deprive him of his chances to terminate the case after the statute of limitations has expired.

Horticultural bandits

Babaev, according to Kommersant, in the 1990s was related to a criminal group operating in the south of the capital. He was regularly detained, he was twice convicted – the first time for possession of firearms, the second time for robbery. Babay was wealthy at that timeme mafiosi, in his park had a Cadillac, Chevrolet, Mercedes-320 and the sixth model “Zhiguli”. For help in his capture, the police announced a reward.

According to Izvestia, Babayev could have been related to an Azerbaijani ethnic criminal group that controlled the Pokrovskaya fruit and vegetable base in Biryulyovo-Zapadnoye. In the 1990s, this point brought colossal profits of tens of millions of dollars every day – the lion’s share of the income remained shadow. In the 1990s in Moscow there were over 30 criminal structures formed by immigrants from Azerbaijan according to the territorial-tribal principle. In those years, the Azerbaijani criminals took over not only the trade in vegetables and herbs, but also a significant part of the drug traffic.

– Babaev could be a militant of one of the ethnic groups. At that time, there was a confrontation between Azerbaijani and Chechen criminal structures. He has already been caught in the illegal arms trade. But, despite the hard times, the murder of the police was an out of the ordinary incident. Especially for Azerbaijani organized crime groups, who preferred to resolve all conflicts with “shoulder straps” in a bloodless corruption way, – a former employee of the unit for combating organized crime told Izvestia. He also noted that a quick escape abroad could not have been accomplished without the help of his “comrades-in-arms”.

– So, they did not refuse him after such an act, but, on the contrary, helped to cross the border. In this regard, the motive for the murder is interesting. Probably, it is not connected with the service activities of the victims – the case was opened under the article on murder (Article 102 of the RSFSR Criminal Code), and not for encroachment on the life of a policeman (Article 191.2 of the RSFSR Criminal Code)– said the former police officer.